


What Makes You Human

by Kari_Kurofai



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:05:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They used to say the world needed Dean Winchester,” Chuck said as he leaned across the table towards Adam. “But somehow the world always forgot about Sam.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes You Human

For the [Rare Ship Comment Fest.](http://non-island.livejournal.com/18323.html)

**What Makes You Human**

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“Do you miss him?” 

It was one of the first things Adam asked, one of the first things he said to Sam after being released from the pit. Sam just smiled as best as he could. What was he supposed to say to that, really? How could he not miss him?

“I miss everyone,” he answered after a pause. “Everyone who gave far too much and received far too little.” Adam folded his fingers together under his chin and looked away, his eyebrows furrowed together with some emotion Sam couldn’t quite read. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered, watching as Adam ducked his head with a little choked noise. 

Adam kept his head down for a long moment before he spoke again, “But you think it’s yours,” he said so softly Sam could barely hear him. 

He couldn’t respond to that without lying.

OoOoOoOoOoO

The Impala still blared old classic rock, the ragged shoebox of cassette tapes still residing under the passenger seat where they’d always been. Adam rooted through them when he had nothing else to do, popping them into the tape player one by one until they eventually worked their way through the whole box. And when they did, he would start all over again. A couple times Sam talked about getting an iPod jack installed in the car, but in the end he never did. Adam didn’t question why.

The first time Sam said _his_ name was when Adam was digging around for the right knife in the trunk. There was a coat there, an old trench coat that was dotted here and there with blood next to a beat up baseball cap with what looked like a bullet hole in it. Adam knocked his elbow against the rumpled coat as he was looking for the silver knife and it fell open enough to reveal another coat, leather and well worn, tucked inside the first. He paused and reached out a hand to touch the edge of it, run his fingers across the softened leather with sudden curiosity. He’d seen this coat before, many times. It was the one his estranged father had worn to baseball games and birthdays. It was the same one he’d clung to when Dean had tried to drag him out of that room, the one that Michael had taken him in. 

He jumped as Sam suddenly slid up beside him, taking Adam’s hand away from the sleeve of the jacket and folding the edges of the trench coat back over it to hide it from view. “It was Dean’s,” he said quietly. Adam just nodded and went back to looking for the knife. Sometimes it was better not to ask.

OoOoOoOoOoO

“They used to say the world needed Dean Winchester,” Chuck said as he leaned across the table towards Adam. “But somehow the world always forgot about Sam.”

Adam glanced up to where Sam was sitting at the bar, his back to them and his gaze focused on the shot of brandy he twirled between his fingers. If he knew Chuck was there he didn’t acknowledge the prophet’s presence. “And me?” he questioned just loud enough for Chuck to hear him over the steady lull and thrum of the music in the place. 

“The world didn’t need Adam,” Chuck said, voice hushed and low so it didn’t carry, “Half as much as Sam Winchester needed Adam.”

When Adam blinked he was gone, leaving only the ring of moisture on the table where his glass had been.

OoOoOoOoOoO

“He misses you,” he said to the mirror one morning.

Adam could see Dean in his own eyes, bits and pieces. Sometimes when he smiled, rare little smiles that he wasn’t sure he actually felt, he knew Sam saw it too. It was reflected in his brash attitude, the way he tended to trip and ruin everything and still managed to stab that week’s monster right in the heart. It was the small tilts of his head and short laughs that didn’t really mean anything at all. 

“He misses you and he’s got me instead.”

And he was no good. He was no Dean Winchester, no older brother to a man who’d only ever had that in his life. He couldn’t _be_ Dean, didn’t want to be. 

So what was he supposed to do?

He stared at his reflection for a long time, at the glint of his eyes that sparked with the same glow Dean’s had, the lines of his face that could have easily been a younger version of the deceased hunter, the slope of his shoulders that echoed with the stance of someone else. 

In the end he punched the glass, shattering it under his fist and cutting his knuckles. He winced at the sharp stabs of pain that laced up his arm upon impact but just continued to glare at his reflection as it cracked at fell apart, falling to the floor in bits and pieces. And that was more like it. He wasn’t Dean Winchester, or even Adam Milligan anymore. He was the little shards of glass scattered across ugly motel tile in a cramped bathroom, impossible to put back together to form the same shape they’d once been in and unable to be what other’s wanted of it.

In the next instant Sam had burst into the room, startled by the sudden noise of shattering glass. He looked between Adam’s shaking, torn hand and the pieces scattered across the floor and pulled Adam away from them with a firm grip on the younger man’s arm.

“Why’d you do that,” Sam asked as he picked the glints of glass from Adam’s hand one by one. Adam didn’t answer and instead kept his gaze trained on the paisley patterned motel comforter between his knees. “Are you remembering?” this time Sam’s tone wasn’t as harsh, softened by understanding and sympathy.

“No.” Adam knew without confirmation that Sam was asking about hell. His wall was strong, not a brick out of place, and he’d been told over and over again not to pick at it or tear it down. “I just …” he started, voice breaking before he could finish.

Sam nodded and waited for him to continue, patiently cleaning the cuts on Adam’s hand with careful fingers. 

Taking a deep breath, Adam let out, “I can’t be who you want me to be, Sam.”

The older man paused and raised an eyebrow. “And who would that be, exactly?”

“Dean. I’m not - I can’t be Dean for you. And I know that you’d rather have him than me so I tried but I _can’t_ and-” He was cut off as Sam threw a hand over his mouth, his eyes narrowed and darker than Adam had ever seen them. 

“I don’t want you to be anyone but yourself, Adam,” he whispered when Adam pushed his hand away. “You can’t live your life trying to be an echo of someone who’s long gone.”

Adam swallowed and snapped his injured hand away from Sam’s, “But it’s _my fault_.”

And for once, Sam didn’t say anything to that. Adam felt a lump of guilt form in his throat as Sam just looked at him, fingers steepled together under his chin. If he’d never been tricked by the angels, if he’d never fallen into Hell, if he’d never … But he had. 

“I think we share that guilt,” Sam said finally. “You and I together.” He reached over and took Adam’s injured hand in his again, beginning to wrap a gauze bandage around it from wrist to knuckles. Adam watched him in silence, unsure of how to respond. In the end, he realized, he knew as little about Dean’s decision as Sam did, whether it had been his life or Sam’s or both he’d bargained for in the end in exchange for his own. 

He closed his eyes and choked out the words, “I’m sorry,” as Sam twisted the bandage around and secured it. 

Sam glanced up and something flickered in his eyes, unreadable and utterly _broken_. He gripped Adam’s hand in his own so tight that it hurt, made Adam gasp with the pain of it, before he brought it up to his mouth and placed a kiss across his bandaged knuckles. “So am I.”

OoOoOoOoOoO

“What do you remember?” 

Sam asked it when they were sitting shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the wall, barricaded in a tiny closet while the werewolf outside it clawed and scratched away uselessly at the door. Adam tilted his head to the side and considered the question, unsure of what exactly Sam was asking of him. He didn’t care to remember his uncountable years in Hell other than the bits and pieces he recalled in his darkest nightmares. He tried not to remember his time with Michael, wasn’t sure if he could, other than the voice in his head and the white blank, willing to obey, place in his mind. He chose to dwell little on his own death, the ghoul’s hands on him and its teeth digging into his still living flesh as he screamed. And of his life, his broken little family and nights spent making his own dinner while his mother worked, he decided was too far behind him to linger on.

“About angels,” Sam clarified when Adam didn’t answer.

Adam tried to smile as he tipped his head back and let it thunk against the wall behind them. “Tricky, greedy, self serving, sneaky, _liars_ ,” he answered. Sam shifted beside him and Adam drew in a breath and continued, “But I remember that they weren’t all like that.” He thought he saw Sam look up when he said this, curiosity and caution written across his face in the darkness, but he couldn’t be sure. “There was the angel who pulled me out of the ground. The one whose coat you keep wrapped around Dean’s in the trunk. I remember him. He was different, he had something all the other’s didn’t. I don’t know what.”

“Courage,” Sam whispered, “faith, loyalty, _love_ …” He shook his head and pressed a little closer to Adam as the werewolf howled outside, frustrated at its inability to get at its prey. 

“He burned me with an angel Molotov,” Adam muttered. Sam laughed. And for the first time it was almost, almost real.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Sam didn’t let Adam shoot any guns for a long, long time. “You can handle the knife,” he’d say and hand Adam some crazy, insane, machete looking object. Adam didn’t see how a gun was any more dangerous. 

It was six months before he took Adam out into the backwoods and taught him how to handle everything from a handgun to a sawed off. 

“You’re a good shot,” Sam noted when Adam hit the target they’d painted onto a tree trunk dead on for a third time. 

Adam glanced at him, “Maybe it’s in my blood.”

Sam just smiled, something uneasy in the expression that Adam wasn’t sure he caught. “Yeah, maybe.”

That night Sam sat him down on the edge of the bed. Adam didn’t question him as Sam tilted the younger man’s head from side to side, studying him from as many angles as possible. “Was the ghoul a good shot too?” he asked when Sam put a finger under his chin to force his head back. 

“Yes.”

“If I told you I’m real, would you believe me?”

Sam blinked and pulled his hand back, letting Adam put his head down and look him dead in the eye. “No,” he answered. Adam swallowed and waited for Sam to explain, to justify his harsh reply. For a heartbeat he didn’t think Sam would even give him that. “I once let myself believe I had a little brother,” Sam went on after a minute or two, “and I taught him everything I knew in the span of a few days, making sure he could defend himself, making sure he was ready to be a hunter and kill the thing that had killed his mother. And then I was tied down and that person I’d thought was my brother was digging a finger into my side and licking my blood off his hand.”

Adam looked away and fisted his hands behind him into the bed sheets. “I would never do that. I wouldn’t hurt you like that.,” he whispered, knowing in his heart that it wasn’t good enough.

Sam stood up and left the room without a reply, locking the door behind him as he went. 

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

“Ghouls don’t have scars,” Sam said one day when he was pressing a towel to the back of Adam’s shoulder, soaking up the blood that oozed from the claw marks underneath. “They forget to mimic the little things.”

Adam looked down at himself, at the crisscross of scars that spanned most of his upper body and beyond. Marks from a Hell he barely remembered. He could tell which ones were puncture, burn, whip, nail, and so on, even without remembering. They stretched up to the base of his neck, over his shoulders and down his back. They were slowly fading, no longer the deep red and pink they had been on the first day, starting to fade from white to the same color as his skin over time. “Why don’t ghouls have them?” he asked, the sound coming out as a hiss when Sam pressed a finger to the edge of his wound.

“Scars are what make us human,” Sam said softly. Adam glanced over his shoulder when Sam’s hands left him, watching as the older man pressed a thumb to a long scar across his palm. “They remind us that we’re alive.”

That night Adam traced out each and every scar on his body that he could reach. “Human,” he told himself, if only to make sure he at least remembered that at the end of the day.

OoOoOoOoOoO

They hunted. Everything from ghosts to demons and anything in between. They never stopped in one place for too long, didn’t linger for more than a few days. Adam started crossing out places in an atlas he found in the back seat of the Impala, big red Xs placed over cities and towns. He wondered if one day they’d fill up the whole book with nothing but crossed out locations. 

They stumbled upon a djinn when they’d been looking for a witch. Stumble was quiet  a literal word in this case, as one second they’d been tramping through a creepy abandoned house and the next Sam had fallen through the rotting floor and into the basement. Adam had screamed for him and raced around the place until he found the stairs. When he’d finally found them Sam had been gone, disappeared from the rubble. 

It was the first case Adam had to work alone, the first where he faced a racing clock and no leads to go on with the fear of losing what little he had breathing down his neck.

When he found Sam he was almost too late, the hunter so far gone on the djinn’s magic to open his eyes. Adam untied him and tore out the IV, kneeling on the ground with Sam’s head cradled in his lap with the djinn’s lifeless body just feet away. 

“I killed him,” he whispered against the top of Sam’s head, his body bent to shield the fallen hunter from anything that might sneak up on them in the dark. “Aren’t you supposed to wake up now?”

He’d read about the effects of the djinn’s magic in their father’s journal, of the things it could make you feel and see and believe, your hearts greatest desires. “I know, okay? I know that you think you aren’t needed, that you’re only trying so hard because you think Dean would be mad if you just gave up. Whatever you’re seeing, they’re just illusions, Sam. Please … You … I need you. What am I left with if you leave me for a bunch of daydreams?” 

Never once in his life had Adam Milligan ever really been alone. There’d always been a mother who’d return home in time to kiss him goodnight, even when he’d been asleep for hours. There had been a father to call if things got bad, no matter how much Adam had hated him. And when he’d been trapped behind a closed door, his fists pounding on the wood in a last desperate effort, there had been someone on the other side to answer his pleas of, “Dean, help!” even if they had been far too late.

“Please don’t leave me,” Adam gasped out, tears dripping down his face and falling onto Sam’s unmoving body. “Please.”

And Sam lifted a hand and wrapped it around Adam’s back, giving him a weak squeeze as he opened his eyes. “Trying not to,” he huffed when Adam fell on him and hugged him so tight he swore he heard his ribs crack. 

OoOoOoOoOoO

“Dean always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon,” Sam said so nonchalantly Adam had to do a double take. They didn’t talk about Dean, rarely mentioned Castiel, and discussed Bobby only when they needed to dig up lists of his old contacts and secret book stashes. 

Adam glanced out the window at the flat, dry, landscape of Arizona they were passing through on their way away from their latest hunt. “Oh, um … Do you want to go?” He gestured vaguely out at the scenery, unsure of which direction the Grand Canyon was exactly.

Sam grinned and Adam’s heart caught in his throat because for once he felt as if the smile directed at him was just a little bit real. “I’d like that,” Sam said as he reached for the knob of the stereo to blast the cassette tape they were on just a little bit louder. Adam whooped with delight and excitement in return. 

It turned out that the Grand Canyon was, well, grand. They drove off road and parked a few yards away from the edge, close enough that one wrong move would send the car hurtling off the edge. 

“Dean once threatened to strap me to the hood of the car and drive off of something like this,” Sam said as he paced towards the edge leading out into the void. Adam stood beside him and promptly shot out a hand to grip Sam’s arm when the other man teasingly put a foot out over the canyon side. 

“I’m more fond of the Thelma and Louise ending myself,” Adam remarked as he tugged Sam back from the side of the canyon, just far enough that he knew he wouldn’t trip and fall in. “Where you hold hands and drive off instead.” Sam smirked in response and held out a hand which Adam took. “I’m not driving into this canyon with you, Sam Winchester,” he warned.

Sam laughed, “But if I really wanted to …”

“I don’t have anything else in my schedule I suppose,” Adam chuckled. 

They lay on the hood of the car as the sun sunk slowly below the horizon. “That Thelma and Louise thing,” Sam said when Adam was popping the cap off a beer, “Is something Dean would have said, I think.”

Adam was all too used to listening for the little inflections in Sam’s voice, watching for the tiny bits of emotion in his eyes that would tell him what the hunter really meant when he spoke, what he was trying to hide. “But not to you?”

Sam didn’t say anything as Adam passed him a beer, and took a long swig of it before summoning up the right words. “He’d do it for me, but not with me. I don’t think he could die knowing he’d dragged me down with him.”

Adam fiddled with his bottle and flicked the cap away, out into the abyss just feet away from the car. “Is that why you keep his coat wrapped inside Castiel’s?”

At first, Adam wasn’t sure Sam heard him until he noticed the slight stiffening of his shoulders. “Dean once told me,” Sam whispered, “of a future where he and Castiel were all that was left, that in the end they were all each other had before they both died. And I wondered … If I was gone, would they keep going? Or would it always end that way in nothing but blood and pain.”

“You think they would have jumped?” Adam asked with a jerk of his head towards the canyon. 

“Dean and Cas?” Sam frowned and took another sip of his beer before answer, “Yeah. If Dean asked him to, Cas would have done just about anything.”

Adam nodded, “You jump, I jump, remember?”

At this, Sam laughed, covering his mouth with a hand and nearly dropping his beer. “Something like that.”

“I would have too, you know,” Adam went on when Sam had stopped laughing. “If you really wanted. I would have drove off the edge with you.”

Sam put his beer down then, resting it on the roof of the Impala behind them. “I wouldn’t ask that of you,” he said in a hushed voice, “ever.”

“But if you did,” Adam whispered in return, “I’d be okay with it. All of it. We could sail off this cliff together and I wouldn’t look back. I-”

And then Sam leaned across the small space between them and kiss him. It wasn’t anything special, nothing long and lingering, no cupping of the face or touching other than the brief touch of their lips against each other. Adam stilled and when Sam pulled back found that his voice had utterly left him. When he didn’t say anything, didn’t even move, Sam just gave him a curt nod and stood up, getting into the car without a word.

Adam sat there for a minute before following, leaving the passenger door open as he crawled in and reach across to where Sam was sitting in the driver’s seat. “Sam-” he started.

“I messed up, forget it,” Sam cut in, refusing to look at him. 

Shaking his head, Adam grabbed the collar of Sam’s shirt and tugged until Sam was forced to meet his gaze before he tilted his head and kissed him in return. “I’m just a little slow on the uptake,” he whispered between them, “Sorry.” Sam nodded and wrapped a hand around the back of Adam’s neck to pull him in.

OoOoOoOoO

The motels near the Grand Canyon were a bit classier than the ones they normally stayed in. _Expensive_ , Adam thought when Sam tumbled him back onto sheets that smelled just a little like lavender. His breath hitched when Sam placed a kiss to the inside of his thigh, over a scar with an origin Adam couldn’t recall. 

“Does it hurt?” Sam asked and Adam realized that until then, he hadn’t been asked that. Hadn’t even cared himself because as long as there was pain he knew he was still alive enough to feel it. 

“I don’t know,” he said honestly and watched the way Sam’s eyebrows furrowed together with worry.

Sam ran his fingers over the scars along the back of his neck where the holy fire had burned at his skin, along the marks on his wrist were the ghoul had dug its teeth into his wrist, across the unnamed puncture marks under his ribs from his time in Hell, asking each time whether they hurt or ached in any way. The only answer Adam gave was, “I don’t know,” because he couldn’t tell, couldn’t remember if they were supposed to hurt.

And then Sam kissed along the little scars over his knuckles where he had punched the mirror. “Does it hurt?” he asked when Adam let out a soft whimper.

“Yes.”

The first time Sam entered him it hurt. Adam’s back arched and Sam had to hold him down, Adam’s fingers clawing at his back. “It hurts,” he gasped out when Sam asked, “It hurts.”

“Should we stop?” Sam asked against his ear, hips stuttering as he tried to hold himself still.

“No.”

He fisted his hands into the sheets when Sam moved, his breath coming out in ragged gasps and cries. It hurt.

OoOoOoOoO

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Sam said when Adam woke up, still tangled in the sheets and feeling a little sticky and sore. 

Adam rolled over on  his stomach and considered him for a moment before pulling Sam down to him, kiss him harshly. “Don’t be stupid,” he snapped as he pushed Sam back onto the bed and straddled his hips. “Now, cowboy,” he smirked, leaning in to bite a mark into Sam’s collar bone. “Did we run out of lube or should I ride you dry.”

Sam let out a hitching little whine and Adam laughed. 

They didn’t leave the motel for almost a week, during which Adam found himself with his back pressed against nearly every one of the walls at some point, his legs wrapped around Sam’s waist and his nails digging into Sam’s upper arms. They’d broken the little table, torn a pretty big rip in one of the blankets, and Adam admitted to being the one to scratching the marks left in the headboard of the bed. 

“Time to go face the real world again,” Sam had said when Adam slipped into the shower with him, letting himself be shuffled back until his head was under the spray and his shoulder blades were flush with the tile wall. 

“One more day,” Adam murmured as he let Sam hoist him up, his back scraping the tile and his legs instinctively hooking around Sam’s waist. “The real world won’t miss us.”

“Probably not,” Sam agreed.

OoOoOoOoOoO

They still listened to the classic rock tapes, the music too loud and the windows rolled down. 

They still hunted until they were too tired to do anything but sleep. Adam’s back flush against Sam’s chest and Sam’s arm thrown over his waist as he snored. 

Sam still checked, sometimes when he thought Adam wasn’t looking, and ran the tips of his fingers across slowly fading scars.

And sometimes Sam still parked at the edge of cliffs and canyons. Adam would watch him stand there, toeing at the line between solid ground and a straight drop, before reaching to pull him back with a hand around Sam’s wrist. 

“Do you miss him?” He asked one night as he traced out invisible demon traps with his fingers across Sam’s chest.

“Everyday,” Sam answered instantly. “But it doesn’t … It’s easier, somehow, now.”

“Do you still want to jump?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you?”

Sam smiled and reached up a hand to tangle it in Adam’s hair. “No. As long as you pull me back I won’t jump.”

“Good.”

OoOoOoOoOoO

“The world doesn’t need Adam Milligan,” Chuck said as he handed Adam a beer. The low thrum of bar music was almost dull sounding in comparison to the prophet’s voice. Adam glanced to the table a few feet away where Sam was talking to a witness of their latest hunt. 

“And Sam?”

“The world forgets about Sam Winchester just as often as it needs him.”

“That doesn’t make him any less important,” Adam said as he took a sip of the beer.

Chuck nodded, “No. And even if the world doesn’t need Adam Milligan that doesn’t mean he isn’t needed.” He paused and held up his glass of scotch to Adam, smiling as Adam compliantly clinked his bottle against it. “For one person, you can be the world if you let yourself.”

Adam laughed quietly, “Cheesy, but I like it. I think that’s enough for me, then. I don’t need the world either.”

“Now that’s a good philosophy,” Chuck smirked. 

  



End file.
